


How To Ask A Girl To The Yule Ball

by tielan



Series: Avengers Wizarding World [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-30
Updated: 2016-06-30
Packaged: 2018-07-19 07:02:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,212
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7350724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It occurs to Steve that he might have started with some small talk. Only Maria doesn’t do small talk. Their last conversation stayed innocuous for two sentences before she asked him what he wanted and he made up some question that she knew wasn’t what he wanted and so she answered it and he had to go away again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How To Ask A Girl To The Yule Ball

**Author's Note:**

  * For [csichick_2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/csichick_2/gifts).



> Emergency Pinch Hit.

She’s studying alone. There’s no-one near her. He’s done this before and it wasn’t so bad the first time.

Steve takes a deep breath and ignores the little voice that points out that Peggy flirted with him for a good two months before he asked her out, while Maria barely knows he exists. And that was back when things were simpler - there were signals and signs that made sense, and girls were easier to read.

But he’s running out of time - it’s only a week before the Yule Ball, and he’s had four girls ask him to go with them.

He felt bad turning them down, but he barely knew them, and they certainly didn’t know him. And, okay, it’s possible that someone’s asked Maria - he thought that maybe Stark would, since he’s been teasing her all year. But the Slytherin boy has asked Pepper Potts, although nobody has been able to say yet whether or not she’s going with him.

And Steve’s stalling.

_Do it now. Don’t be a coward._

He’s faced the Brotherhood, dark wizards, and the modern world; he can sit down and ask Maria Hill a simple question.

She looks up from her book when he sits down, her clear blue eyes wary and watchful. “Rogers.”

“Will you go to the Yule Ball with me?”

It occurs to Steve that he might have started with some small talk. Only Maria doesn’t _do_ small talk. Their last conversation stayed innocuous for two sentences before she asked him what he wanted and he made up some question that she knew wasn’t what he wanted and so she answered it and he had to go away again.

Maria looks up from her book and stares at him blankly for nearly four heartbeats before she asks, “Why?”

“Because I need to go with someone?” Too late, Steve realises that this is probably not his best argument.

“You need to go with someone,” she repeats. “And so you asked me. I’m flattered.”

“You don’t fawn over me,” he blurts and thinks of what an inane thing that is to say.

He should have said something about how she’s a great flyer on the Quidditch pitch. It would have made sense to say she’s beautiful – all classic bones and lines and curves he’s been itching to sketch for the last few months except that someone would see and then everything would be messy.

It would have been sensible to say he admired her cool thinking when Phil Coulson got attacked by Loki and needed help. Or that he likes that she can engage Stark in a full-fledged verbal fight and come out more or less even.

She’d probably even prefer to be told that she thinks about the best way to tackle a problem and then goes about getting everything into place instead of leaping in and trying to do it all at once.

‘ _You don’t fawn over me_ ’? Is, as Stark would probably say, lame.

Sometimes being a Gryffindor is hell.

She blinks. “Most guys would find that a deterrent.”

“I’m not most guys.”

“Clearly.” Maria looks him up and down, like she’s deciding whether he’s pretty enough for her to be seen with. “Okay.”

“I’m flattered,” he replies, stung by the survey.

“You should be.” She turns back to her book. “I was going to ask Stark.”

"He's asked Pepper." And then, because his stomach's a mess at the thought that she doesn't really want to go with him, he asks, "What do girls see in Stark anyway?"

"I can't speak for all girls, but he's entertaining."

"But you don't...like him?"

"I don't 'pause' _like_ you, and I've agreed to go with you."

A little spark of anger unfurls in Steve’s gut, and, stung, he retorts, "You're so kind to take pity on me!"

"Oh, and you're not taking pity on me?"

As if! "No, I'm not." That floors her long enough for Steve to ask, "Why would you think that?"

It seems to take her a minute to find her voice. She blinks, her gaze unwavering on her face. "Because of Phil? And me."

And that clutches at his gut. The Hufflepuff boy is still in the mediwizarding hospital recovering after Loki’s attack, and he and Maria seemed to be good friends in spite of the fact that she’s in Slytherin House. Although that might have been because of Clint and Natasha, who seemed to hang out with them a lot, too. Maybe it was more than just friends. "You and Phil were…” What’s the word for it these days? “…together?"

"No! I mean because you're feeling guilty about Phil and you think he'd want you to look after me. And because...I'm, well, _me_."

Steve feels like they’re going around in circles. “That’s the reason I’m asking you.”

“You’re the first one to ask me,” she says, frank and exasperated. “What does that tell you?”

“That…the other guys are blind?”

She rolls her eyes. “That I’m not interesting.”

Steve stares at her. Then sits down. “You have this look on your face when you’re annoyed with someone. It’s like you’re contemplating Transfiguring them into a teacup and then dropping them on the floor. When you’re playing Quidditch, you _focus_ – you didn’t actually _see_ those Ravenclaw Beaters you went through in the last game, they were just in the way of where you were going, which was the goal. You rub your fingers together when you’re thinking hard, or uncomfortable – like now. And you don’t smile often, but it’s like the sun shines when you do.”

Okay, so there’s probably a balance between telling a girl he likes her, and blurting out all these things and Steve has just missed it.

He rather wishes for another Dark attack on the school right now. As in right now.  _Right. Now._

Nope.

Maria blinks at him for a few seconds, then drops her gaze to her book. Her cheeks have gone bright scarlet, and her hand has frozen in the middle of the rubbing-fingers gesture – probably when she realised Steve’s been watching her like some kind of stalker.

Her gaze flickers up. “I...don’t know what to say to that.”

He considers it for a moment. “You could say you’d like to go with me to the Yule Ball.”

“I already said I’d go with you.”

“Oh. Right.” Awkward moment again. Steve stares at his hands and wonders how it’s possible to mess something up so _badly_. Can he ask for a do-over?

“Rogers.” He meets her gaze, and the pink is kind of fading from her cheeks. She takes a deep breath. “Before, I said I’d go with you to the Yule Ball—”

“You don’t have to. I kind of sprung it on you—”

“Shut _up_ , Rogers. I said I’d go with you before, but now I’d _like_ to go with you.”

He gapes at her. It takes him a moment to work out what she’s said, and another to get his mouth working again. “Really?”

Maria rolls her eyes, but her mouth quirks. “Really.”

“Well, then.” There’s a moment when Steve doesn’t quite know what to do with himself. Then Maria grins, and maybe it’s just a function of the Great Hall ceiling, but the world really _does_ brighten.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I actually had you on my treats list, except then life crashed down on me with a horrible thud, and I've been snowed under since then.
> 
> This was part of an old seven-part series in a HP-setting where the Avengers + Coulson asked their dates to the Yule Ball after a Chitauri Invasion-like incident in the universe. In one or two memorable cases, the Avenger in question _didn't actually ask_. But that's neither here, nor there. It was unfinished and unposted, but seemed to fit your requirements, csichick_2, so I hope you don't mind that I dusted it up and finished it off as a gift when the call went out.
> 
> Either way, thank you for the inspiration to finish it!


End file.
